Will Modi listen to the warning bells? PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah forged a formidable alliance and bonding and they powered the BJP party to unbelievable heights motivating the party cadre and party leaders. There is no denying that they turned the party into a powerhouse across the country and penetrated even into the northeast regions and Karnataka in the South.
They are on the verge of realizing their dream of Congress Mukt Bharat. When everything is going in their way, the results in the Karnataka state elections came as a rude shock. Though Karnataka state elections repercussions will not be found at the national level the signals cannot be missed.
One cannot deny the fact that there is no alternative to Modi at the national level. But while this is turning out to be an advantage at the national level and in the parliamentary elections, the same cannot be said when it comes to the state governments. This is where BJP is losing the plot.
During the Vajpayee-Advani era, they groomed many impactful leaders in the state and it including even PM Modi. Many stalwarts like Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, the late Sushma Swaraj, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the late Pramod Mahajan, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje, and Raman Singh among many others. Many of these leaders showed their power even in the state elections. Not to forget Sushma Swaraj, George Fernandez, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, and others.
But under the Modi-Shah regime, there are no such leaders and even though a few like Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal, Bhupendra Yadav, Prakash Javadekar, Nirmala Sitharaman, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Muralidhar Rao, and the likes of Giriraj Singh and D.V. Sadananda Gowda, they failed to show their power in the state elections. Only Yogi Adityanath is able to invigorate the cadre and party in UP and this is the saving grace for the party.
Modi and Shah should realize that state elections are different from parliamentary elections and while local issues important in the state take center stage in the state elections, national issues take center stage in the parliamentary elections. So PM Modi despite his charisma and stature at the International level cannot define the result of the state elections. The party should groom strong leaders in the state who can galvanize the people and the party cadre or else depending on PM Modi even for panchayat elections will spell doom for them.